Online Teaching Resources for Theatre Design & Technology

Matt Kizer: Scenic & Lighting Design

Online Teaching Resources for Theatre Design & Technology
The resources below are all previously published individually. Collectively, they are good material that can be applied in online learning. This list includes 42 articles and 5 different activities.

Activities
• The Drama Machine

This is usually an in-class activity used with a Smart Board or a projector. It works well over Zoom meetings, though. It also works extremely well as a basis for student projects for both design and play-writing. Have students run the machine to arrive at a plot, style, and all of the other parameters, then produce a paper, a short play, or a design package that fulfills those criteria.

• Color Lab

This is a browser-based lighting lab. It is a great way to examine how color mixes both on actors and on the floor from three directions. This works very well with shared screens over applications such as Zoom. Discuss the artistic impact of varying levels of light from different directions and color symbolism. You or your students can use the PRINT-SCREEN key on your computer to capture any image. You can then paste it into a Word document, a PowerPoint slide, or usually even an email.

• Light Lab for Dance

This is also completely browser-based. It is a complete proscenium stage with a traditional dance-lighting plot in place. It allows complete control of color for top-light, side-light, and the cyclorama, plus footlights, high-sides, and specials.

• Gobo Lab

This browser-based light lab allows students and teachers to explore the direction and texture of lighting. Color is abandoned, leaving the designer to rely on the power of shadow and direction.

• Vintage Lighting Instruments

PAR cans, ellipsoidals, fresnels, followspots, and many other instruments have been with us for many decades. This tool explores the application and components of the traditional lighting instruments that formed the foundation of contemporary lighting.

Articles
The 42 articles listed below cover topics that include stagecraft, design, career choices, copyright law, international activities, and projections. They can each lead to further discussion, ideas, or rebuttal.

About half of them include video content, with lengths ranging from two to twelve minutes in length. You can see them all listed with sorting options here.

 

  •  Online Teaching Resources for Theatre Design & Technology
  • Scenic Projections and their Ideal Environment
  • Projections Onstage: Don’t Wait. You Will Never Have the Newest Technology
  • A Simple Fireplace Onstage
  • Low Tech Solutions for Responsive Media on Stage
  • Casters: Big and Small
  • Changing Scenery with Story Book Panels
  • Rigging a Projector to an Electric
  • Deer Netting and Projections
  • Plymouth State University: Performance at the Prague Quadrennial 2019
  • My Son and I at the Exhibition of Countries and Regions
  • The National Theatre at Prague: A Quick Overview
  • BRILLIANT BEING
  • Making Projection Media for Disney’s The Little Mermaid
  • Simple Design Choices and Stability of Basic Scenery
  • The Theatre Hierarchy
  • An Awesome Fake Piano
  • Dataton Watchout Basics
  • Making that media look like you’re drawing it in real time…
  • Amazing Spiderman Design Tricks
  • The Director’s Playground
  • Light Boxes, Gobos, and Metallic Paint
  • What is the Prague Quadrennial?
  • Jack Knife Wagons
  • Transparent Columns
  • 51 Shades of Grey: How We See Light and Dark
  • The Creative Team: Leaving the Comfort Zone
  • Projections Onstage Part IV: Choices about Media
  • Projections on Stage Part III: Choices about Screens
  • Projections on Stage Part II: Making Good Use of Ordinary Projectors
  • Projections on Stage Part I: How do I make them brighter?
  • WSD2017 Workshop RECONNECT Series
  • WMUR: Brilliant Being
  • Around the PQ – Tribes and Plague Rats
  • Around the PQ – The Modalities of Exhibitions
  • Around the PQ – Hungarian Exhibit: Donor for Promotheus
  • Soda Bottle Balustrade
  • Cyprus Mail: Controlling projection
  • Theatrical Organization of Cyprus Four-Day Seminar
  • Shaping Space: Dance and Technology
  • The Callboard
  • How Do I Get Started?
  • Art from Nothing